`Challenger` To Be Taken Off Launch Pad Today

March 5, 1985|United Press International.

CAPE CANAVERAL — Workers planned to haul the grounded shuttle Challenger off the launch pad today to clear the way for Discovery`s blastoff around the end of March on a hastily revised mission, officials said Monday.

Challenger`s planned launch Thursday was canceled because of potential trouble with a key $100 million satellite that was to have been carried into orbit to join a sister spacecraft to improve space-to-ground communications.

The cancellation forced mission planners to delay Discovery`s March 22 launch and to combine elements of both payloads into one.

If all goes well, Discovery will be taken from its hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building this weekend and hauled to the pad late next week.

Discovery`s payload will be made up of the commercial communications satellite originally scheduled for Challenger and a Navy relay station already scheduled for Discovery.

Charles Redmond, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the agency has not decided which crew will fly the revised mission. Also unresolved is whether Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, will be on board.

Garn, chairman of the subcommittee that oversees NASA`s budget, had been scheduled to blast off Thursday aboard Challenger.

At the Kennedy Space Center, workers readied Challenger for the move back to its hangar where the ship will be prepared for a Spacelab mission scheduled for late next month.

Redmond said the agency hopes to get Discovery off the ground on the revised flight before the end of March.

``The chances of getting Discovery off by the end of the month are reasonable,`` Redmond said. ``It looks reasonably good the remaining year`s schedule will hold together as much as possible.``

Ten flights remain on the launch schedule, but when Challenger`s tracking and data relay satellite can be worked back into the schedule has not been determined.

The tracking satellite and a commercial relay station owned by Telesat Canada were taken out of Challenger`s payload bay Sunday.